Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the Book of
John, the Gospel of John, chapter 15. I've been dealing in this
chapter with Christ the true vine and the subject of abiding
in Christ, showing the oneness of Christ and the people whom
God gave him before the foundation of the world, who are known by
the fact that Christ died for their sins, redeemed them, and
then he sends his Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the third person
of the Trinity, to bring the truth to them in power which
is called the new birth, which is regeneration, which means
a quickening, giving life to dead sinners, and conversion,
a convincing of the truth by the gospel. The Bible says the
gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. And that is the gospel preached,
communicated in the power of the Holy Spirit. And when they
are brought into a spiritual union with Christ, you see the
people of God, the elect of God, those whom God chose to save
before the foundation of the world, they've always been in
union with Christ legally. by election, by justification,
by sanctification, set apart, and they were legally in union.
They were in union with Christ in redemption. He died for their
sins. We read back in John chapter
10 where Christ said, the good shepherd gives his life for the
sheep. And now he shows how they're spiritually in union with Christ,
so as to bring forth fruit, fruit unto God, the fruit of faith,
the fruit of repentance, the fruits of perseverance. And now
he makes this statement, and the title of the message is,
is keeping Christ's commandments, keeping his commandments. And
I've got that from John chapter 15 and verse 10. And what he's been talking about,
he said, I am the vine, his father is the husbandman, the vine dresser,
and you are the branches. If you are a child of God, if
you are a believer, a true believer, meaning you have been born again
by the Spirit. And understand now, the new birth
does not come because you believe. There's a lot of people today
who have that so confused, and it's important now that we don't
confuse this. Many people who believe in the
heresy of free willism In other words, they say man's will is
free and he has a spark of good and he can choose to do that
which is good. The Bible does not teach that, my friend. Now
listen to me. And I know that's offensive to
people, but the Bible says that we fell in Adam into a state
of sin and spiritual death. The reason we must be born again
is because our first birth is a birth in sin and death. The Bible says in Ephesians 2,
1, And you hath he quickened, made alive, who were dead in
trespasses and sin. You weren't partly alive. You
didn't maintain a spark of goodness. Neither did I. That's why the
Bible says there's none good, no, not one. It's speaking of
the natural man, and the Bible says, the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God. So you need to understand
that the new birth does not come about as the result of you or
I believing or making the right choice, because by nature, if
left to ourselves, if left to our own natural will, we will
not make the right choice. Now that's what the Bible teaches.
There's none that seeketh after God, none that doeth good. That
is good according to God's standard of goodness. We may do good according
to man's standard, but man's standard is low. God's standard
is high. And that standard of goodness
can only be found in the glorious person and finished work of Christ.
So when it talks about those who are in spiritual union with
Christ, who have been born again by the Spirit, regenerated and
converted by the Spirit under the preaching of the gospel,
is talking about those whom God chose before the foundation of
the world and gave to Christ, placing all of the conditions
of their salvation upon Christ. That's why he said in John 6,
37, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me. and him
that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. Now don't go
back into the error of fatalism and trying to say, well, if that's
true, it doesn't matter what I do. I don't have to seek the
Lord. Listen, you're commanded to seek the Lord. But if you
do, what does the Bible say? It means he sought you first.
He came to you first and he gave you the mindset and even the
notion to seek him in his word. And so you're not God and I'm
not God. So the Bible says the secret
things belong to God. The revealed things belong to
us. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.
That's true. Because believing is the gift of God to those whom
he saves. Now believing is not the ground
of our salvation or the cause, the grace of God. in the person
and work of Christ is the ground and the cause. You see that?
So when we look about that, he says, I'm the vine, you're the
branches, you bear fruit. You don't produce fruit. I don't
produce fruit. We bear it from the life of the
vine, which is given to us in that spiritual union. And the
first fruit is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is validated,
proved to be real by repentance of dead works and idolatry. You see a prime example of that
in Philippians 3. And then by perseverance in the
faith. You see those who are born again
by the Spirit can never be lost again. If the Spirit comes and
convinces a sinner of the truth, the gospel as it is in Christ,
there's three things you can say about that sinner saved by
grace. He cannot ignore it, he cannot
deny it, and he cannot leave it. Now he can stray, he's still
a sinner saved by grace, a sinner saved by grace, but he can't
leave it because God won't let him, God won't let him go. And
that's why Christ said like in verse four of John 15, abide
in me and I in you. Abiding in Christ, I preached
on that the last time. Well, look at verse seven of
John 15. He says, if you abide in me and
my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall
be done unto you. Now that's not talking about
any and everything. I mean, you can ask, abiding
in Christ has to do with a saving union, a spiritual union with
Christ concerning salvation. And he's not talking about just
getting everything we desire. Some things we desire would not
be good for us. And God knows what we need and
what we must have. He is wisdom. And so he's not making God to
be a genie in a bottle, rub it three times and you get three
wishes or something like that. When he says, you shall ask what
you will and it shall be done, he's talking about in the realm
of salvation and the blessedness of salvation that comes by Christ. And he says in verse eight, he
says, herein is my father glorified that you bear much fruit, so
shall you be my disciples. The bearing of the fruit is the
result and evidence of being a disciple. You don't produce
fruit, you bear it if you're one of God's children, and the
bearing of that fruit does not make you a disciple, The bearing
of that fruit, the fruits of faith, repentance, and perseverance,
which includes obedience, the bearing of that fruit is an evidence
of being a disciple of Christ. And that's the key. As you go
down through these passages, you'll see a lot of if statements.
Let's go on, and when we come to the next one, I'll show you
what I'm talking about. Look at verse eight, or verse nine. He says, as the Father hath loved
me, so have I loved you, continue in my love. Now, the love of
God is to his people. It's not to all without exception.
I'm sorry, the Bible doesn't teach that. I know it says, for
God so loved the world, but the world there is not every individual
without exception. The book of Psalms, Psalm 5,
tells us that God hates all workers of iniquity. Romans chapter nine
says that God said, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Now
that hatred that God has is not sinful hatred. It's not selfish
hatred like ours. The reason we're commanded to
love all people, you know, because we're sinners and other people
are sinners and we have no right to hate them. But God's hatred
is not a selfish, emotional, evil hatred. God's hatred is
His justice, His just wrath against sin, against sinners to whom
sin is charged. And so when the book of Psalms,
when Psalm 5-5 says, God hates all workers of iniquity, you
look at that and you say, well now, what is a worker of iniquity? Well, there it's talking about
a person to whom sin is charged, the iniquity. And he doesn't
measure up. Well, aren't I a sinner? Aren't
you a sinner? Could it be said that I'm a worker
of iniquity and you're a worker of iniquity? Does anything we
do ever measure up to the perfection of righteousness that can only
be found in Christ? And the answer is no. But we
are not, if we're saved by the grace of God, we are also justified. And to be justified means two
things. Number one, it means to be forgiven
of all our sins on a just ground. And what is the one and only
just ground of the forgiveness of sins? The blood of Jesus Christ. And then if we're justified,
we are declared righteous in God's sight. Now, how can God
declare me righteous knowing that I'm still a sinner in myself. And God sees that sin. He knows
my sin. God knows my heart. When I have
bad thoughts, you can't see them, but God can and does. When I
do something with a bad motive, an evil motive, you can't see
it, but God can. So how can God, who knows all
and sees all, declare me righteous and not lie, and not be unjust
and untrue to himself? There's only one way. The just
ground of declaring sinners righteous is the righteousness of Jesus
Christ imputed to them. That means literally accounted
to them, charged to them. That's what substitution is all
about. Christ is the substitute for
his people. Their sins were charged to him.
He's their surety. He took upon himself the debt
of the sins of his sheep, his church, God's elect. and he paid
the debt and established a perfect righteousness which God has laid
to their charge. The Bible says in Romans 8 33,
who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? For it's
God who justifies, who can condemn us? It's Christ that died. Yea
rather is risen again at the right hand of the father ever
living to make intercession for us. I stand before God not in
a righteousness that I worked, or tried to work, I stand before
God in the righteousness of another, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is
my surety, my substitute, my redeemer, my intercessor, my
keeper. That's who Christ is. And so
if you're a sinner saved by grace, that's what you are, justified
in God's sight. Now all whom God has justified
will be born again. Because God's not willing that
any of them should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Now, they are the objects of God's love. And that's what I
wanna be, how about you? You wanna be an object of God's
love? Well, God's love can only be found in Christ. Come to Jesus
Christ. You don't come to Jesus Christ
to get God to love you, you come to Jesus Christ because God loves
his people. That's what it is. And 1 John
4 10 says that herein is love, not that we love God. The basis
of God's love for his sheep, his church, his elect is not
that they love God, but that he loved them. He loved us and
gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Well, what is a
propitiation? It's a sin-bearing sacrifice
that brings complete satisfaction, complete redemption. So much
so that we can say it this way, as Christ himself said, all for
whom he died shall be saved. He said that if I be lifted up,
I'll draw all unto me, all of his sheep, all of his people. That's said in John chapter 12.
So when he says in verse nine here of John 15, as the father
hath loved me, the father loving the son, the father being the
first person of the triune Godhead, God the father, the son being
the second person of the triune Godhead, God the son, as the
father loved me, so have I loved you. Continue in my love. Now
how does a sinner continue in the love of Christ? He continues
in the truth. over back in the book of John,
where he talks about, you'll be my disciples indeed, if you
continue in the truth. There's another if statement,
but look down at verse 10. He says, if you keep my commandments,
keeping Christ's commandments, that's the title of the lesson,
you shall abide in my love. Now see, this is how abiding
in his truth, abiding in his commandments, abiding in His
love. They're all the same thing. He
says, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide
in His love. Now Christ kept the Father's
commandments perfectly. And that speaks of Him in His
capacity as the Savior of His people, the mediator of the covenant. Christ in the nature of His person
is co-equal with the Father and the Spirit in every attribute
of deity. He's not a lesser God. He is
equally God. And that's the Trinity. One God,
not three, but one God in three distinct persons. But for the
purpose of the salvation of His people, Christ became subject
to the Father, The Father's will, his will and the Father's will
are one and the same, but he subjected himself to the Father
for the purpose of saving his people from their sins. That's
why he was made a little lower than the angels. That's why he
came in humiliation in a human body without sin. And he says,
if you keep my commandments. Now, when a lot of people see
that, if you keep my commandments, Their minds usually will go to
the law, like the Ten Commandments, even the ceremonial law and things
like that. But that's not what he's talking
about. First of all, I want you to understand something about
this. What did Christ command his people
to do? Well, every word that comes out
of his mouth to his people is a commandment, in essence, But
he never commanded his people to try to keep the law of Moses,
the Ten Commandments, the ceremonial law, the dietary laws, the civil
laws, in order to be saved. In fact, he said anybody that
does that, their deeds are evil. That's what Christ said. You
cannot be saved by keeping the law, because you can't keep the
law. I can't either. The law is the
law of holiness and righteousness. You say, well, I can try to keep
the law. Well, you should try to keep Christ's commandments.
When I say the law, I'm talking about the law of Moses. We're not under the law of Moses
now. You understand that? Somebody said, well, what about
the Ten Commandments? Well, there are moral principles in the Ten
Commandments that have always been in force since man was created. But the Ten Commandments was
a form, a code form that was given to Israel under the Old
Covenant, and that Old Covenant has been abolished by way of
fulfillment in the death of Christ. Well, does that mean we go out
and murder? No. Murder is a sin. We're not to
be murderers, not even in our minds. Now, the truth is, is
that we've all murdered in our minds. What did Christ say in
the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five? And I believe it's
verse 20, around verse 26 and 7, 28, when he talks about, you've
heard it said by them of old, thou shalt not kill, but I say
unto you to be angry without a cause. That means to be angry
in a way that's unrighteous is to kill. You've heard it said,
thou shalt not commit adultery. I tell you, if you lust, you
commit adultery. You understand that. See, that's
why we can't be saved by our works. Law keeping for salvation
is a deadly business because it leads you to death, eternal
death. So what is our hope then? Well, Christ, Romans 10, four,
Christ is the end of the law, the fulfillment of the law, and
the abolishment of the law for righteousness to everyone that
believeth. So when he says, keep my commandments,
what is his command? Believe on him, trust in him,
rest in him, follow him, plead his blood and righteousness,
obey his word. What did he say? Read the Bible,
read the New Testament. It tells you. And when it says,
if you keep my commandments, you abide in his love. Now there's
an if statement. Now there's two kinds of if statements. These are subjunctive clauses,
what they are. You know grammar. Sometimes the
Bible says, if you do this, then this will happen, or this will
be the truth. And other times it says it the
same way, but in another context. If can be a conditional if, such
as was found in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant law. Like,
for example, a lot of people quote 2 Chronicles 7. I can't
remember the exact verse. It said, if my people who are
called by my name will humble themselves, then I will bless
them, basically. That's a conditional if. And
it's given under the old covenant, bilateral conditional covenant. And you know what? Back then,
they failed. They did not meet the condition.
And you wanna know why? Because they were sinners. But
you wanna know something else? If you had been under that covenant,
if you're under a bilateral conditional covenant for salvation, for blessedness,
you too have and will continue to fail. So would I. Why? Because we're sinners too. That's why the covenant of salvation
The covenant of grace is not a bilateral covenant in which
the blessings are conditioned on sinners. Because if it were,
we would all fail. The covenant of salvation is
a unilateral covenant, conditioned on one person, the Lord Jesus
Christ, who fulfilled all of its conditions and deals out
the blessings of it upon his people without any cause. That's what grace is all about.
It's not by works, not even our faith. It's by what Christ did. And the if passages that are
given out under that covenant of grace are not conditional
ifs. They are all evidential ifs. Do you understand that? In other
words, when he says, if you keep my commandments, you abide in
my love. We do not try to keep his, we
do not keep his commandments in order to earn or deserve his
love because we never earn it and we never deserve it. Even
when we were yet enemies, Christ died for his people. We didn't
earn it, we don't deserve it. That's all of salvation. all
blessings of salvation. We don't earn them, we don't
deserve them. But if we have them, that evidences the unconditional
grace and love and mercy of God towards us. And so we go on. He says in verse 11, these things
have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that
your joy might be full. Now what a joyous message this
is for a person who knows their sinfulness. Now many people don't know their
sinfulness. Oh, they'll say they're not perfect. They'll say they're
sinners. but they still believe that they can do something to
earn part of their salvation or some part of their blessings
or some rewards, plural, in heaven. My friend, if you think that,
you don't know yourself. The Holy Spirit has not convicted
you of sin because if He does, you'll know then that you have
no earning power with God. Oh, my friend, it is all of grace. The Bible says in Ephesians 1-3
that blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who
hath blessed us with his people, believers, sinners saved by grace,
with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. And that's a joyous message to
a sinner. That's joy. Thank God for his
mercy and his grace. And he says in verse 12, this
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Now, how did Christ love his people? Unconditionally. even when we were enemies. Read
about it in Ephesians chapter one and Ephesians chapter two.
It's there, even when we were enemies. And he commands his
people to love one another in the same way, not in order to
be saved, but because we already are. not in order to earn his
blessings but because he's already blessed us with all spiritual
blessings. And so we know that we cannot love each other perfectly
even though we should try as brethren in Christ if we're saved.
And to do so is to stay with each other under the truth. We
support each other in the truth. Now, we may have problems with
one another, may not even like one another. I mean, there's
all kinds of different things in the New Testament and in the
churches where believers are having problems, but we are stuck
together in the truth. I may have a brother or sister
in Christ who does me wrong, and I may get angry, may not
even speak to him for a while, but we're together under the
tree. Well, I hope you'll join us next week for another message
from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
by phone at 229-432-6969 or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.